So here on GSW, we're continuing to publish videos from this year's Independent Games Summit, which took place at Game Developers Conference 2007 last March as part of the Independent Games Festival.

The latest and fifth 2007 Independent Games Summit lecture to go up is from Jonathan Blow, creator of 2006 IGF Design Innovation award winner Braid, and pretty watchable, as Blow takes us through the theory and practice behind several fascinating game prototypes, many also available on his website. These include a gestural spellcasting 2D and 3D game prototype, so-called Oracle Billiards (which is playing pool when you can see where all the balls will end up, thanks to the fact that 'Newtonian physics is easy'!), and a detailed demo of Braid itself - which starts at 15.10 into the lecture.

The lecture ends with a demo of a painting game where you must reproduce Old Masters and create new art, and get rated on them by art critics, crafting the pics to appeal to their tastes. Overall, it's just one of the most watchable demonstrations of intriguing design ideas I've seen in a long time.

[Oh, and you'll possibly want to skip to 01.45 into the video when you watch, since there's a not quite brief enough intro featuring me (!) telling people to fill in ratings cards and turn off cellphones. If anyone wants to cut this off and re-upload, feel free.]

Here's a direct Google Video link for the lecture, plus a higher-res downloadable .MP4 version and an embedded version:

Here's the original session description: "Former Game Developer magazine code columnist and 2006 IGF Design Innovation winner Jonathan Blow, the creator of innovative time-manipulating platform title Braid, discusses the deliberate methodology behind his indie game prototyping. He shows how he conceives, develops, and tests out indie concepts in playable form, and discusses how you know when a prototype is working, and where to take it from there, demonstrating multiple in-development prototypes (including Braid) along the way."

(Other IGS 2007 videos posted so far are Matt Wegner on physics, alongside the Gastronaut founders on 'Small Arms' for XBLA, the Telltale folks on Sam & Max/episodic gaming, and Gamelab's Eric Zimmerman on 'The Casual Cash Cow'.)